Monday, June 9, 2014

House Painting How To's - Creating Swatch Samples (Series Part One)

Hello! Today's blog post as you can see from the title, is a series on how to paint your house if you are ever in need to. I am not a painting expert nor am I suggesting you take any of my advice, this is just how I will be painting my home and my experiences on what works and what does not.

Why am I creating this series? This all started when my mom told me that we were moving and we get to paint our whole house to make it look awesome. I was extremely excited because I've been wanting to paint my room since we moved here, because I despise the pink colour of my room. I get the opportunity to paint my WHOLE house with the help of my brother, but still, its going to be a lot of work. You'll get to see how I take on painting a whole house!

Now lets start with the basic and important step everyone should consider. What colour should I paint my room? Whatever room your planning to paint, choosing a colour could be the most difficult decision. Throughout this series you're going to see that I will be having a lot of difficulty choosing a colour scheme for my house and colours for certain rooms. For example, for mine and my brother's bathroom, I don't know if I want to stay a pink/coral colour or go a different route and try a light grey. The only thing stopping us from changing to a completely different shade is the fact that we have pink marbled looking counters. You'll see later in the series.

Feeling overwhelmed??

Look at all the choices in colours. There are hundreds, if not thousands of choices! These are all a bunch of swatches I got from Home Depot. If I really wanted to, I could go to Lowes, Walmart, anywhere that sells paint and try different brands. These are mainly Behr and CIL.

How to Pick A Colour For Your Room

How did I decide what colour to paint my room? I actually considered between changing my room colour to a sea foam green and a lavender or grey purple colour. Don't base your colour choices on the colour of your wall now. Base your choice on the furniture you have in your room and how it will look later on. All the furniture in my room is white except for one little brown shelf which I plan to get rid of, so either of my choice in colours would work.

The Importance of Samples

Over the past week I've been scouring Pinterest for great room colour ideas. If you don't follow me on Pinterest yet, click here. I've got all the colour swatches I wanted and now it is time to go to the store to get the paint samples! It is important to test your paint choices first because the colour on the paper cards obviously will look different in certain lighting and different sheens. Here are the two shades I chose.

Paint swatches from Behr

I chose to get a sample of "Monologue" and "On Location".

The sample size I got.

I got two of these nifty little tubs for $5 each at Home Depot. They only have the matte finish in sample sizes, so the colour will vary when you choose your shade and finish. I'm going for eggshell, which is kind of similar to matte but with a little shine.

DO NOT swatch your paint directly onto your walls!

As I was getting ready to sample the paint onto my walls, I decided to do a little more research on using swatch paints. I was informed that it would be a bad idea to swatch a bunch of shades on your wall since the different finishes of paint may leave a weird colour underneath your finished paint job. I didn't want to have that issue so the next best thing was to paint on big swatches and stick those on the wall.

How to Make Swatch Boards (To Sample Paint Colours)

What you will need:

You need some paint brushes (mini paint rollers would actually be better for this project, but I realized that once it was too late), paint trays/roller trays, your paint samples, and some newspaper to lay on the floor to prevent a mess.

Painters Tape

You're going to need this tape for the trim on your walls (will be featured in another blog post), this will be used to make a boarder around your foamboard. We are trying to lure your eyes away from your previous paint colour and the white boarder will help your eyes see the new paint swatches in your room, without the distraction from the old paint colour.

Bi-Fold Foam Board

I bought the bi-fold foam board because I had two colours to paint and this was already folded in two, making my job a little easier for me. I got this board from Michaels, and got another one eventually from Walmart.

Step One:

Lay out your newspaper and place your board on it.

Step Two:

Tape around the edge of your board, and also tape the middle crease as well since you're making two paint swatches.

Step Three:

Start painting!

As you can see, a paint roller would of done a better job than a paint brush. It leaves it a bit streaky. I did two coats to ensure that the colour would show through, since I think I will be doing two coats on my wall to cover the old paint.

Step Four:

Peel off the painters tape when its a bit dry but not too dry so it doesn't peel of the paint. I peeled it off right when I finished painting to avoid peeling paint.

Now you let it dry completely. You're suppose to wait 24 hours before you place it against your wall to ensure the paint is dried completely. The colour gets significantly darker as the time passes by.

The Importance of Lighting.

My paint swatches looks so different in certain lighting, this is what it looks like when I turn my lights on. My lights have a warm tinge to it, almost a yellowish orange.

With natural light.

This is how it will look like in the morning or afternoon when I open up my curtains. The colour looks a lot cooler and calmer.

I hope you enjoyed part one in my series, and I hope this helps anyone out looking to paint their room! I still haven't decided on a colour yet but hopefully I will be able to keep you updated.

(Update: After putting these two colours against my wall, I did not like them at all. I used the Behr website to help me look for other colour options. This is why you do your research!)

Out of the two shades I chose, which do you like best?

I hope my beauty readers will enjoy these DIY/Lifestyle type of posts too! Don't worry friends, I will try to do a beauty post in the next few days. I am in the process of moving soon and prepping my home so it could be sold, so posts may be delayed or days may be skipped. Hope you will understand!

1 comment:

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